


Find Me, If You Can

by AlasDisownedYetAgain



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Barricades, Crack, Fluff and Angst, Javert Lives, M/M, Montreuil-sur-Mer, Pining, Post-Madeleine Era, Post-Seine, Suicidal Thoughts, and jean valjean is pretty much oblivious, javert realizes he fucked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 00:59:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19140415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlasDisownedYetAgain/pseuds/AlasDisownedYetAgain
Summary: The night after the rebellion, Javert finds himself looking down into the Seine.Luckily, so does Jean Valjean.





	1. I Who Am But Dust And Ash

His face was furtive, looking down as he shuffled across the empty square. Something about his eyes, the lackluster sheen of his hair, grown (or perhaps simply neglected) to fall past his shoulders, the undisguised reproach with which he peered at his own drenched reflection in the pools of water accumulated from Paris’ autumn rains, suggested to any passing onlooker that the bloodied man in the sea-soaked greatcoat had committed some great sin, like a murderer who, when he sees the prone figure of his victim real in front of him, runs to and fro like a frenzied animal, eyes panicked, searching for any escape. It was with a similar mad fervour that Inspector Javert paced the cobbles of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, his mind flying in every direction. Jean Valjean was a criminal. That, without a doubt, was certain, marked in deep red by the brand on his chest.

And yet.

And yet, that very night, what seemed now like a lifetime ago, this man, this criminal, had spared his life when it had been his duty to die. He had cut his bonds, without hoping for any mercy, without rancor. Now, he had just saved the life of one of the rebels, a student from the barricades, and Javert had let him walk away, a free man. The whole story was preposterous. Silly, even. Javert kept hoping that it was all some dream or hallucination in his final moments, that Jean Valjean had in fact killed him at the barricades, in the dark back alley behind the inn. Then, the world would at least be realigned. Justice would remain good, and any breach thereof a sin. Did it matter if he died?

 

\----

 

Through the dusty window, the lights in the house were on, a mocking call.

It was not justice, this, to go and arrest a man responsible for the safety of so many. If this man was truly evil, if no convict could be reformed, then why was he still here? What did Jean Valjean stand to lose? Everything: riches from Montreuil, a life, his freedom. So then why had he simply stood there?

Javert’s head snapped up. There was another option: If he didn’t have to choose, he could do no wrong. It seemed so simple in his mind, in his steps as he retraced his steps across the broken stones of the shimmering streets. In the lamplight, the trees glowed a fiery copper, almost as if burning. Each step felt dizzying, a lead weight sinking into the ground, moving of its own accord, unbidden by him, without his muddled mind forming any instruction. It would be a matter of only several streets before he would be before the bridge, his fate sealed, but he had business to attend to first.

 

\----

 

The door of the Préfecture was open, as always. As soon as Javert walked in, dozens of heads snapped up. Vidocq was there in two strides, his face a mixture of relief and shock. “Dear Lord! Javert, we heard…we all thought..." Javert interrupted him, passing by him brusquely. “Yes, Vidocq, I’m alive. Not as though you looked for long. No body. Is Gisquet here?” He paused, looking around at the mess of paperwork and files that littered the already packed desks, shaking his head. “I presume not, by the state of things. Well, no matter. I’ll see to it he gets his report.” Confused, the lieutenant stuttered and made an abortive movement towards him before Javert slammed the door in his face, turning towards his final task. This would be a long night.

An hour later, his report was finished.

 

He read over it several times before adjusting the packet and replacing it on the splintered desk. Every injustice in the police system, every ounce of corruption that oozed through the prisons and prefectures, noted down on twenty-seven sheets of rough paper in his perfectly lined handwriting. As a final touch, he penned a note on a separate sheet of paper, to make sure that the letter reached its destination.

_To the attention of Pref. Henri Gisquet and whomever it may concern, signed, Insp. Javert._

 

Concise, short, direct. As was always his signature.

He sighed woefully, walking as fast as he could out of the prefecture. If others noticed his hurry, they let it go unheeded. There was a revolution on, and a first-class police inspector no doubt had greater matters to attend to than formalities or paperwork.

 

Walking through those great metal doors, Javert halted, as if hearing some faraway forgotten song from his childhood. He almost saw himself, then, a young officer, too tall for his age, first stepping into the Paris Préfecture next to M. Chabouillet, his patron. How impressed he had been then, how certain! How the world had seemed to him a sure and trustworthy place, where the stars followed their course, never straying, ever constant in their orbit of the heavens.

Now, despite the blackness of the night, Javert could still see that ghost, the spectre of a bright young officer, and broke into a run, running with all of his might from the life he had not lived for what felt like centuries. One step followed another, and, blindly, he found himself climbing up from the bridge onto the cold parapet, over the tumult of the roaring Seine. Above the faint streetlamps, the sky spread like an empty canvas, a void matched only by the darkness of his downturned face’s black eyes, that had dulled to stubborn resignation, as cold and hard as ever.

A spasm of pain shot up his right arm, jolting him awake.

Ashamedly, he realized that he had been holding onto the gate, his knuckles white, like a child afraid of a neighbour’s dog clinging to his mother’s skirts. His wounds from the barricade had reopened, and his worn shirt bloomed crimson, staining his borrowed workmen’s clothes in an ironically artistic pattern. Setting his hat onto the cold stone, he rose to his full height once more, taking in his surroundings, the whole torn city, frayed at the edges, that spread out until past the horizon, its grey buildings black in the darkness, engulfed by the endless night. 

In a few hours, morning would come, and with the sunrise, the river Lethe would wash away any memory of a wayward gang of rebellious students, all dead now, of a boy no older than twelve who sang as he died, of a girl with a bullet and a letter in her hand, and of a solitary spy shot in a back alley.

He closed his eyes, one foot already over the void.

 

A hand closed over his shoulder, dragging him backwards.


	2. At The End Of The Day

Without turning, Javert already knew who it was that had no doubt followed him here from the Rue de l’Homme-Armé. Who else, after all this time?

“Valjean,” he growled, trying to shrug off the hand that fastened him to life like a vice, “Leave me be. I am not another soul for you to save.”

Beneath him, the Seine roared, its night-black rapids tumbling and crashing into each other, beckoning him. Valjean had no doubt sensed his decision, for his iron grip grew tighter, almost crushing Javert’s arm beneath his coat. 

“Javert, whatever it is that troubles you so much, I -”

Javert turned sharply, almost losing his balance, to face his tormentor. Valjean’s face was streaked with blood and grime from the battle, and his eyes were weighed down by purple streaks that stretched almost until the end of his nose. Nevertheless, they were the same warm brown, radiating so much god-damned kindness it almost physically hurt. This was the face, below all the dirt, of Jean Madeleine, the man he had come to respect, to - to love, all those years ago. All under false pretenses, under a pseudonym and a golden mask.

“Stop this. This, whatever you think you’re doing.” he snapped, his voice barely composed. “You don’t get to save me. I’m not one of your poor souls, to accept charity from a criminal.” He paused, his voice shaking.

“The Angel of Mercy. That’s what they call you. You. You, Jean-Le-Cric, who would have stood before the guillotine for a wretch wrongfully convicted. Whom I hunted for years, for decades.” he paused, hesitant.  
“You spared me today. Why?”

Valjean shook his head. “You’ve always been wrong about me, Javert. Wrong about the world, about everything.” 

“Then let me go.”

Silence instilled itself between them, leaving only the roar of the river behind them, like distant mocking laughter. Javert turned again to face the open air. He was going to make Valjean leave, one way or another.  
Sighing, he prepared himself for his last confession.  
An old fear, useless and discarded long ago, still tugged at him, a survival instinct from years lived apart. It was silly: He was at the edge of the Pont-au-Change, and still the fear pushed at him, like he was some schoolboy. Another sigh. He started to speak again, facing the night, half of a sorrowful grin on his face.

“Very well, then. Since you will not leave me alone, it will be no difficult matter to make you go.”

Valjean almost laughed. “You know that I am much stronger than you. Javert, please, step down from there.” A glimmer of sadness, of something unnamed, reached his voice. “You don’t deserve this.”

“Don’t mock me now, Valjean, I pray. Look down: I’m standing in my grave. There’s nothing you can do to change that. However, it seems you are obstinate as ever in your charity. So I will make you go. I will tell you my story, my last confession, and, just this once, I will ask you, as Jean Madeleine, to forgive me.”

“Forgive you for what?”

“For everything. For every injustice I ever saw committed against you, a good a man as I have ever met. For the way I hunted you, like a dog, across Paris and France. And -” He stopped, the words caught in his throat.

Valjean sighed. “Javert, you know you are forgiven already. You were doing your duty, and you did extremely well.” There again, the colour in his voice, that betrayed an emotion beyond mere sadness. 

Javert gritted his teeth.

“I did not mean that.” The Seine was growing louder now, and Javert’s heart threatened to burst. “ Monsie- Valjean, forgive me then, for…”

“For what, man? You did as you thought best.”

“For loving you.”

There it was. The knowledge that had gnawed at him since that day in Montreuil, that had eaten at his soul since then, across Paris, across decades. Now that he had said it, it didn’t feel real.

Five seconds passed, then ten, then half a minute. And still Javert didn’t hear the telltale irregular clatter of Valjean’s boots across the stone pathway. He turned his head, half expecting to see Valjean on the floor, in a fit of apoplexy, writhing in agony. Instead, Valjean simply stood there, mouth half agape, face completely unreadable. 

Annoyed that he hadn’t succeeded, Javert continued, his voice starting to quaver.

“Yes, it is true. I have known since Montreuil. I was at first suspicious of the strange mayor, but over time, I grew to trust you, then respect you, then - then it happened all at once. I did not realize at first what the feeling was, so unfamiliar was it. When you drove to Arras, when I found out my suspicions had been correct, it broke me more than anything I have ever survived. I hated you. I still try to hate you.”

After a minute, Valjean spoke, softly:

“You - you - all this time?”

Javert hadn’t realized his hands were shaking. He steeled himself.

“So I ask you to forgive me, a last act of charity. For everything. For meeting you, in the first place. For bringing you the news about Champmathieu. For loving you. For bringing you so much misery.”

Valjean was quiet, his face downturned. Javert thought he must have been laughing at the idiocy of it all, but a silver tear traced a clear path through the grime of his face. He raised his face, but his eyes stayed downcast, searching the floor for an escape. Finally, he spoke, his voice broken.

“I’ll forgive you,” he said, raising his head, as if looking for an answer in the stars, “if - if you forgive me.”

 

His gaze met Javert’s, and in the space of an instant, decades of understanding passed between them. Decades of loneliness, and misery, but also of love, a love so powerful it had turned to hatred. 

“Javert.”

It was the first time someone had spoken his name like that. Without command, without reprimand. Valjean extended his hand, and Javert took it. Slowly, he stepped down from the parapet, the roar of the Seine dim now. Neither let go, even when he was safely on the ground. They held each other, closely, taking in everything each had never noticed before about the other in all those years. 

Javert’s hair was falling in front of his face, having untied it sometime between his flight from the Préfecture and the moment he had felt Valjean’s arm holding him back from the edge of the bridge. Valjean reached over to brush it behind his ear. Suddenly aware of how close they were, Javert flushed a deep crimson. 

“Are you all right? If you say to, this will stop here, and now.”

“No. I - I want this. With all my heart.”

Valjean’s hand lingered, resting against the side of his head, as if taking in every feature to memorize, like some holy scripture. Below the golden streetlamps, his white hair shimmered through all the blood and grime of the previous day. Valjean pulled Javert to him, pressing a kiss against his brow. He spoke softly, like a lullaby.

“Do you know, Javert, I think I was a little in love with you, too, back in Montreuil. Only, I never - never hoped. I was always afraid, so afraid. I still am. But I want this.”

Suddenly, he kissed him. It was chaste and pure, like the petal of a flower brushing against his lips. Unwittingly, Javert sighed into the kiss, leaning in. The kiss deepened, their hands brushing each other’s faces, holding on as if they were each other’s only hopes in a storm, the dimness of the streetlamps obscuring them from anyone who may have been walking around in the dead of night. Around them, everything seemed to stop: The night was once again full of stars, Paris disappeared, and the Seine’s clamor faded away, to be replaced by a line of brilliant red over the horizon, a summer’s rising sun. 

When they let go of each other, if only to prevent scandal, Valjean looked once again into Javert’s eyes with love beyond compare. The darkest night had ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wrote this on a dare to annoy a friend like half a year ago, so don't take the overly cheesy writing style too seriously, it's on purpose.


End file.
